


Threads

by mmmdraco



Category: Tennis no Oujisama | Prince of Tennis
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-07-17
Updated: 2012-07-17
Packaged: 2017-11-10 03:40:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 575
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/461821
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mmmdraco/pseuds/mmmdraco
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Ryoma arrived, he took everything by storm and tore it all to pieces and wove it back together by his own whims. But he was too young to keep control of everything, so a few loose threads fluttered to the ground. Tezuka was one such thread.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Threads

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: I don't own the characters, I mean no harm, I have no money... Stuff like that. Yeah.

Before Ryoma came to Seigaku, Tezuka was the man to beat.

When Ryoma arrived, he took everything by storm and tore it all to pieces and wove it back together by his own whims. But he was too young to keep control of everything, so a few loose threads fluttered to the ground.

Tezuka was such a thread. When he was injured in his match against Atobe, Ryoma called out his name in a plaintive voice that Momoshiro would later describe as the same voice that Ryoma used to call Karupin's name when he lost him. When asked about that moment, Ryoma's eyes would search out empty spots in the room.

Ryoma, in his youth and ignorance, wasn't yet sure what to do with a single thread that he'd left out, so he let it be until he came to a conclusion. He knew the thread was an important one, and knew he must find a place to put it, but also knew that there was a chance that the opening wasn't there yet.

Atobe had observed once that Tezuka was a cold and calculating tennis player while Ryoma was spirited and flashy. They had very separate styles that were both extremely effective. But, Atobe realized, they were never meant to play doubles. They were similar in one aspect: total domination. If it came to their court, they had to play it. Atobe knew, instead, that Ryoma was to Tezuka what Atobe himself had hoped to be: his eternal rival.

Between the two of them, they racked up acknowledgement and accolades beyond compare... and yet there was something missing.

Ryoma didn't realize until he was sitting in his hotel room in New York that Tezuka's thread had a place just like every other thread. But it was different, somehow. Perhaps it was the red thread of fate... but one that hadn't quite settled into place.

So Ryoma took a plane back to Japan, right in the middle of the U.S. Open, and met with Tezuka for a match... for closure... and to see how the thread would fall.

The results weren't exactly what Ryoma was expecting. Instead of being humiliated by his buchou, the game was close, and the playing divine. The 'winning' wasn't the point of the game this time. Instead, it was simply the playing. It was hitting a shot he knew that no one could touch and having it turned back to him with a deft flick of the wrist. It was just making the right height to hit the lob that was coming, and just making it to the ground in order to get it back again. It was just being there, playing, without words, and without feelings. It was tennis, it was simple, and it was *there*: connected.

Ryoma couldn't point to the exact moment when he wove the thread of Tezuka back into everything, or even if Tezuka hadn't done it himself, but Tezuka was there, and things were complete, and that was really all that mattered.

Things in the next few years, while they were in a different school for at least a year, and then going through high school, and possibly into college, would all be difficult: complicated so by the fact that it would probably be a long time from one game to the next.

But they would play again and again until Ryoma was satisfied that Tezuka's thread was wrapped firmly around his finger.


End file.
